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Time to Support the Good Guys

By: kowalski (Diary)  |  July 27th, 2011 at 09:41 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Ladies and gentlemen of Redstate, this is going to be my last post [scratch that, I have the feeling this is just getting started] on this debt ceiling/cap/balance subject.  I only have a few words to say and I hope that any lack of eloquence on my part doesn’t reflect negatively on the importance of the matter we have before us at this moment.

It’s time to support the Good Guys.

The Good Guys in this fight are the people who are pressing hard, and continue to press hard, against very long odds, for a Cut/Cap/Balance solution to the country’s fiscal woes.   They are the ones who are looking honestly at the exponential growth in our national debt, the completely heedless nature of which has become so otherworldly that it’s barely recognizable any longer.  We’re pushing up against the boundary of 100% of our GDP in debt, if we haven’t already gone over it, depending on whose estimates you listen to.

Earlier this afternoon the Washington Post had an article trying to draw a parallel between this situation and that of 1990, when the US Debt was barely 5% of its GDP, about $492 billion dollars and approximately $850 billion today.  The small errors in these numbers aren’t significant.  You can read their article here:

“Read their lips: For the origins of today’s deficit fight, look to 1990″

The author there is remembering the debt in 1990 at $492 billion dollars or $850 billion in “today’s dollars.”

Through a long and tortured series of inside-the-beltway reminiscences, he somehow manages to convince himself that the people who are calling for real limits on debts that are more than 1,500 percent higher than that  – right now – are the wrongheaded people.  Our debt currently stands at something like 15 trillion dollars.  It’s such an enormous amount of money that I really don’t think the entire rest of the world even understands it, and I don’t know whether we understand it ourselves.  We hear things like 150 billion Euros for Greece and don’t realize that’s about that’s only about $215 billion dollars.    That’s about 1/60th of our national debt.  If the latest Greek bailout is 1 minute of agonizing pain on a clock, our national debt is AN HOUR.  Does anyone in the world except the Chinese understand a Trillion Dollars?   The limits just keep rising out of sight – but our ability to pay those debts, as everyone knows in the past couple of years, is nowhere near as robust.  Go take a look at middle America.

What has happened since 1990 is that the situation has gotten between 15-20 times worse.  And all of that money, all of that debt that is owed, is on the backs of our children.  I’d say that’s a pretty damn good reason to be “intransigent” about it.

[Update:  Let's say our national debt is $15 trillion dollars.  That's a stack of dollar bills that would reach almost FOUR TIMES THE AVERAGE DISTANCE TO THE MOON.  If we had a way of piling it up, gluing it together and climbing it, we could climb all the way to the moon and back, TWICE on the pile of our national debt.]

I get scared too when the President of the United States, his Treasury Secretary, and half of the MSM, and Al Franken, get up and proclaim that without increasing that limit, we’re calling for a catastrophe.   Unstable people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz who base their existence on spending ever increasing sums of other people’s money and who are also utterly debased in their thinking try to stand up and throw stones.  It may be that we’ve reached a point of reckoning, but that’s hardly a catastrophe: it’s healthy that we call a halt to it.  It’s even more important that we realize people like Erick and the Club for Growth and Heritage are the people – probably the last of the honest people – who are sounding the alarm and calling on us all to do something about it.  Don’t be scared.  Be honest!

Please help me get behind their efforts and continue to support them.  This is going to be a difficult series of days.  Keep your cool, everyone, but do what I did three days ago:  shake it off and keep demanding what you know is right.  I had a bout of the “fear fever” but I came to my senses about it.

Our country deserves better.  It doesn’t deserve to be spent into oblivion by people who are so irresponsible they cannot even recognize more than an order of magnitude of difference in the scale of the problems we face.  And all of that more-than-an-order-of-magnitude difference has happened in just over 20 years, the time it takes for a generation to “grow up.”

What have we done?

COMMENTS

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  • Ausonius

    Ordinary people become great when they choose the difficult, the correct path, against pressure to remain mediocre and preserve the status quo.

    Will our Republican leaders – mediocrities all – rise at least to intellectual greatness by refusing to yield on Leftist Orwellian arithmetic, where 2 trillion and 2 trillion equal 22 trillion?

    Actual arithmetic forces us to recall that a trillion equals 1,000 Billion.

    It would seem a simple arithmetical idea to explain to America that 14 thousand billion is an impossible number, which should never have been reached.

    I still believe that commercials with the number visible would convert anyone still wondering what to do.

    $14,000,000,000,000

  • Aaron Gardner

    Takes a big man to admit that he was scared. Glad you got your mind right.

  • chbroussard

    They need our support now and may also need our support next election cycle. Bucking the Establishment usually doesn’t win you many friends in DC.

    • gekster

      I knew the true kowalski would emerge from the rant of a couple of days age.

  • traversecityconservative

    Boehner’s bill will pass by the help of Democrats because they won’t get enough House Republicans to vote for it.

  • kowalski

    I hate myself for it. I didn’t expect to have to tell people, supposedly responsible people, the obvious. You shouldn’t have to expect to tell people not to swim in gasoline while shooting flamethrowers. You shouldn’t have to expect to tell people not to eat five gallons of lard and follow it up with a quart of Crisco before going to work. Drink three quarts of tequila and go for a drive through the elementary school parking lot at 8:30 a.m. You shouldn’t have to expect to tell people to not expect to live when they put the barrel of a loaded shotgun in their mouths and pull the trigger.

    But it’s pretty clear to me at this point, and I guess I’ve known for a long time, but wasn’t willing to accept it, for some crazy reason – that we just can’t trust ourselves to run a country. The Chinese will have to do an intervention, and they will. We’re going to wreck it. We’re like Big Jim from Croce’s song. I don’t think we realize how fast it will all be over.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njvgjZbjoR4&feature=related

    • gekster

      and I do owe you one from Christmass.

      • snowshooze

        One of the first guitar music books I ever bought.

      • snowshooze

        One of the first guitar music books I ever bought.

  • JSobieski

    If our survival was just up to us, all hope would have been dashed a long time ago. The Old Testament is pretty much a tale of cyclical failure. Definitely makes one wonder about all of this.

    If you want a dose of some grounded positivity, I highly recommend watching The Waltons on the Hallmark channel. Hang in there and God speed to you and yours.

    • kowalski

      It’s nothing but sad to watch. I wasn’t born into the baby boom generation and I also wasn’t born into the generation that grew up during America’s greatest years, and when I look at what future generations of Americans have to look forward to, I see nothing but bitterness and resentment, unless we really take steps to stop the slide now.

      I do understand why Boehner cries sometimes. He knows, just looking at the information he has available to him, that unless America changes course drastically, everyone is going to get much poorer and much less free.

      Yeah, certain groups of people will continue to have nice lives. But the country itself is already fraying at the seams and it’s not hard to see why. It’s just that a lot of people who haven’t been directly affected by it have not had to look.

      But they will, and sooner than later. I expect an increasing exodus of the wealthy in the next few years. Large numbers of dependent people will elect Democrats who promise them sustenance. America will shrink, our debt won’t go away, and everyone will work to pay the Chinese and the rest of the noncontributory members of our economy. It’s already happening. I’m ten times as fatalistic as people talk about on TV and I’m pretty sure I’m right unless we get the spending and debt under control, soon.

      • kowalski

        He knows just how fast the Soviet Union really collapsed. It was just a matter of a few percent across their society that pushed them into the abyss. He’s a great joker and one of my favorites is this:

        ?In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state?s role absolute,? Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ?In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.?

        Ho Ho. Good joke.

        • lineholder

          Kowalski, this was well done and very timely. A lot of us are scared of many different things. I know that I am.. And depending on how things go during the next week or so, a lot of us could end up feeling betrayed, disillusioned, and disappointed.

          But this is like planting a garden by hand, with nothing other than a hoe and pure perseverance. We’ve just barely managed to break ground last November, and there is still a long, long way to go if we want to turn things around.

          So regardless of how we might feel or how scared we might be, this is the time to harden our resolve and make a long-term commitment, because it IS the right thing to do, for ourselves, for our children, and for the future of this country.

      • kowalski

        When I say “nothing but sad to watch” I have another thought on that, and I’d rather talk about that in the morning tomorrow.

        In some ways our political process really is broken but in an important sense what has also hapened is that a lot more people have gotten involved than usually would be. That’s had good effects and it’s also brought a lot of chaos. America until very recently was still pretty top-down, in both parties. I think it’s still a very open question whether the Internet and all the greater participation by so many people has made government easier or better or more efficient or functional. It’d be interesting to hear from some “old hand” political consultants for their views on that question.

        One thing’s for sure: there isn’t enough time to read more than a tiny fraction of the opinions out there.

        • JSobieski

          I think the key variable is the ratio of education to participation. Participation is a good thing if people have a clue. Participation by the clueless is a bad thing. The Internet definitely enhances participation, but I think its an open question as to whether the education aspects can keep up with the participation increase.

          In terms of the broader melancholy, take solace in faith and the knowledge that most generations of people on earth faced dire circumstances. We are hardly unique in facing challenges. Despite everything mankind has survived . . . and survived with things worth preserving. If we focus on doing specific things of some value, we can leave the bigger picture things to God.

          I have absolutely no idea how someone can be an atheist and not be depressed. But for a belief in God, I would not be able to function in these troubled times.

        • acat

          And I’m not admitting to being old or anything, I’m coming at it more from the tech side – that is, looking at what effects the disruptive nature of the internet has had elsewhere and seeing what’s likely to happen – that it is, like most things, a mixed bag. Whether it’s a curate’s egg or not remains to be seen.

          On the good side, access to information is much faster and much easier than ever before. Joe or Jane Sixpack can easily google (or bing, for Neil) a bit and find out quite a lot about everyone from their local dogcatcher to their local POTUS.

          On the bad side, while the quantity of freely available information is way up, the quality of the information is way down. The InfoWars web site comes to mind – lots of information, but … calling it slanted is being overly kind. Those cheering for the demise of “the main stream media” miss an important factoid – it’s the same MSM who pays the stringers and journalists and fact-checkers .. how do journalists – assuming ethical ones can exist -get paid? This is something we, as a society, have not figured out yet.

          On the good side, representatives now have both a means to keep their constituents up to date on the bills coming up and how they’re thinking about them, and any bills they’re crafting, via twitter or e-mail.

          On the bad side, constituents appear to be trying to change the role of representative from “one who represents” to “one who takes a poll and votes accordingly”. The danger here is obvious – that way lies a pure democracy and mob rule. While corporations have had to deal with this as well – the internet component of the campaign to bring back “Firefly” comes to mind – it’s going to take a generation for our government, especially congress, to figure it out.

          On the good side, it’s much, much easier to get some sunshine into government and especially political campaign finance. This is an area that desperately needs sunlight, it is a dismal ethically retarded morass that should be drained, burned, and sown with salt.

          On the bad side, it’s much, much easier to create new shadows, as Obama’s campaign did by disabling the default security features on their credit card processing web site. Additionally, large donors – who tend to be wealthy people or successful business ventures, i.e. Koch – can be more easily found and demonized, so there’s an incentive to hide in the shadows. This reflects a pair of cultural problems – first, that free speech should cover political donations, and second that making a donation can have consequences, just as shouting “Fire!” in a theater will.

          Mew

  • Flagstaff

    is equivalent to a $10,000 bill placed at each kilometer from the sun to the orbit of Saturn, 1.5 billion kilometers from the sun.

    How far is that? It takes sunlight about 1 hour and 23 minutes to reach Saturn. By comparison, it takes light about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the sun.

    To beat a dead horse, each beam of light would zip past 1,500,000,000 $10,000 bills.

    Until the first TARP, followed by the Obama budgets, the only people who cared how much a trillion is were astronomers.

  • Flagstaff

    I only intended to recommend this once, not three times. I thought it didn’t take, so I hit the button again and again.

  • http://undo4me.com WmCraig

    I am my grandparent’s grandchild that must pay for the largess that the government granted them when times where flush. I have children and grandchildren of my own, but this isn’t their debt alone. This debt is our debt. Ours meaning you, me and our living children and living grandchildren. We all are paying every day for this.

    The years of social security surplus that could be easily stolen by Congress to cover their lies and their irresponsibility is gone. This year, a part of the deficit is caused by the need to make good on some Social Security IOU’s. The size of the Social Security shortfall will only increase. So, from our tax dollars we are paying back all those years of theft. And that isn’t the money covered by the limit’s placed on the debt ceiling. This is off the books theft that we have to pay back and Congress continues to pretend doesn’t exist.

    So lets get real. Lets stop calling it someone elses problem, it is our problem. We have to pay this off.

    Once we stop pretending the problem to pay this off starts two generations down the road we can face the real problem in this country. We have emasculated our industrial capability in the name of Ecological perfection. Without an industrial base there will be no recovery and therefore there will be no big increase in cash flow that will cover the cost of paying back the stolen social security funds, or the 15 Trillion (aka 15Thousand Billion) dollars of official borrowing.

    Get the language right, maybe we can change start to change the discussion from more borrowing to greated GDP. A big increase in GDP is what those grandchildren are supposed to have created to pay off this debt.
    Look where we are!

    WmCraig

  • kowalski

    Don’t be daunted by the political machinations. We know who the people were that understood the difference between games and reality. We need those people more than ever.

  • lukematthews

    That seems to be the idiotic response I hear from Democrats. It’s like they are just watching a movie or a play and this has no real life affect on their lives. I’m just utterly flummoxed on the attitude we are facing and when you bring up the numbers they just shake their heads almost in disbelief.

    • kowalski

      We’re paying much more, for many more people (a much larger number of Hispanics now in addition to Blacks since the Great Society, which has been a complete failure) for more people with less. Evidently that hasn’t reached the people in Washington yet. They’re content to spend you into oblivion, they’ll still have their jobs.

      Washington, DC is one of the only cities in the country that has been recession-proof. A gigantic outpouring of Federal money has gone to building the District’s roads out. That’s because Johns Hopkins University published a big issue of their alumni newsletter calling for trillions of dollars more spending in infrastructure. It keeps people busy.

      What’s happened in the past three years is that Washington thinks it’s a microcosm for the way the rest of the country should be but the problem is that all they’re doing is spending other people’s money that is increasingly disappearing. It’ll dry up, they’ll all go: “Wow, we never knew.” And then walk away.

      • kowalski

        Is to make sure you remain a deficit hawk under any administration including the current one. The peliticians who deserve our support – now and increasingly in the future – are going to be the deficit hawks who push for lower government spending at every level – state, county, municipal, federal.

        I’m posting this AGAIN because I can’t believe people haven’t read it yet.

        http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/economic-recovery

        The very first point, and the most important, is this:

        “World’s lowest percentage of GDP (among developed nations) spent on government; only with a low spend will investors have faith that taxes will stay low.”

        That goal is something everyone in every town and state across this country can understand and work on. Everyone should be doing it, in all the communities across this country.

        • kowalski

          You have to BE THERE. You have to get off your duff and be involved at your town meetings and be involved in the political fights for your state legislators. You can’t sit on the sidelines.

          For a long time in America we were, in both parties, a “top-down” society in terms of how policy was promulgated. We are much less of one now. What that means is that instead of the involvement of a few influential people it is really going to require the involvement of many more, at a grassroots level, people who are undaunted and are unafraid to curtail the spending and offer better solutions.

          It has to happen across this country. It’s going to take everyone.

          • kowalski

            All the housing bubble did was bring a lot of Hispanics into the country to do construction work. Once the bubble burst, all those people lost half their net worth. Now they’re here and we’re paying for them.

            Listen, that’s how my development in Chicago was built by speculators: with illegal and shoddy labor. The Hispanics who did the work came across the border from Mexico, went to Chicago, got a little wealthy while the boom was going on, and then when the bubble popped, they all had to decide whether to stay or go back to Mexico.

            Mexican unemployment is now half of the US unemployment rate. It’s not a big mystery why a lot of Mexicans want to leave the United States to find the American Dream: they were here, they worked hard, and it all fell apart. But all of that was driven by a vast and absolutely heedless attempt on the part of the U.S. Government and then, Wall Street, to build everyone a home based on absolutely crazy economics, which we sold to everyone including Norway, all around the world.

          • acat

            And I don’t want to interrupt your flow here…

            One other thing the housing bubble did was to make the choice of whether to “vote with our feet” harder for a good percentage of Americans.

            “Do I move to Texas, where the jobs are?” is now “Do I eat the loss on my house and move to Texas, where the jobs are?”

            Makes it harder for the laboratories of democracy to function as they should.

            Mew

          • kowalski

            I don’t have an exhaustive list here. It made a lot more people a lot more “stuck.” I think the net effect was to decrease America’s economic mobility. I know because I think about it all the time, and you’re right about that: once you cannot sell something you’re committed to pay for, you basically have a foot bolted to the floor. So it’s made us poorer *and* less mobile.

            If you’d like to watch something really dry, here’s the Brookings Institution’s C-SPAN video on the housing bubble.

            Yeah, it’s C-SPAN and it’s one of the best 20 minutes you’ll ever spend if you want to understand what happened. It’s all so exquisitely academic starting out at about 34:15.

            Really, honestly it’s one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen, for everyone who has been stuck or who got stuck, and are now stuck. I refuse to use anything else ending in -uck. ;)

            http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/205408-1

  • renny

    The good guys have stood up and taken all the pies in the face and come back with more good guy stuff, but they are only one vote or part of one branch of the gov’t.

    The Sen. is not going to vote for the exact bill of cap, cut, and amend., but they may get close to something like it because the House has shaped the argument and whittled it down to “no new taxes.”

    fearless leader, little o, is furious, because he was told (by his teleprompter) that the Reps. always fold (a la Bush 010) and are afraid of a gov’t shutdown (a la Newt 1995), and neither of those promises worked out. The Reps. did not fold, are not going to vote more taxes, and are not afraid of the gov’t “shutting down” because it will not shut down over a debt limit question.

    Something like cut, cap, and amend is going to come out of the Sen., because they have brought NOTHING to the table, not even a real budget since 2009, and they will have to do SOMETHING soon.